In 2025, more than 200 climate-related disasters affected more than 87.8 million people worldwide, according to preliminary figures from the International Disaster Database analyzed by Mongabay. The disasters include flash floods, landslides, severe storms, wildfires and droughts. Drought and food insecurity impacted the largest number of people. In Syria, which faced its worst drought in 36 years, an estimated 14.5 million people were left without enough food. In Kenya, a drought in January 2025 affected food supply for more than 2 million people. In Nepal’s Madhesh province, a September drought left 1.2 million people short of food. In late November and early December, a rare convergence of two tropical cyclones and a typhoon caused thousands of deaths across Asia, making it the deadliest tropical storm system of 2025. Indonesia reported 1,109 deaths and Sri Lanka 826, with and hundreds more in Pakistan and Thailand. The database shows that, globally, climate-related disasters claimed more than 8,000 lives in 2025, though the actual number is likely much higher, due to missing data from several events and unreported disasters from some countries.   In October, the year’s most destructive storm, Hurricane Melissa, reached sustained wind speeds of 295 kilometers per hour (185 miles per hour) and affected millions of people across the Caribbean. It left at least 127 people dead in Jamaica, Haiti, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. Human-caused warming from burning fossil fuels made Hurricane Melissa more intense and more likely, according to World Weather Attribution (WWA), a global research network…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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